Kimmy, Sean Senior, Sean Junior, and Leo Beamsley’s home was chalk white when they moved in. It’s still mostly white from the outside, but inside it’s all the colours of their joy.
A neurodivergent family through and through, the Beamsleys have built a world that works for them. Raising two young boys on the autism and ADHD spectrum, Kimmy and Sean Sr run their home on compassion and creativity.
Sean Jr’s room is Minecraft green, with characters and creatures from the game lining the walls. Leo’s room has a mini rock climbing room. The kitchen ceiling is lined with vinyls. And hiding around the place are seven cats and a dog named Spiderman. A life with challenges is met by the Beamsleys with a sparkle in their eyes.
How long have you all been living here now?
We bought the house six years ago. It’ll be seven in January.
It was newly renovated [when we moved in], all white. It was carpeted, no fences outside. And the yard was like, really bad. It was kind of like a rubbish dump at the back, really run down.
We’ve done a lot of work. We’ve fully fenced it, we ripped out the carpet and we put the tiles down for the kids. We replaced all the windows, so now it has full safety glass. And we put in those [kitchen] doors so that there’s no one that can get into the kitchen, because Leo would get into the kitchen and try to eat raw chicken and stuff.
So it’s fully autism friendly, but also just sensory .We wanted to make it feel like us because it didn’t have any personality before. Which was cool, because it was a blank slate.
I see you have a craft space set up in the kitchen, is that where you create?
Yes, but I often bring it over to the table too, because then I can be involved in family time. We’ve kind of worked the living room around Sean [Sr’s] injury – which he sustained during his military service. Because it was quite isolating when he was stuck in the bedroom, so that’s why we have the bed out here too.
Tell me a bit about all the art on the walls. Is it all yours Kimmy?
Some of it, and the other stuff is family stuff. So some of little Sean’s, and big Sean’s. Sometimes we do art together as a family. Like in the weekend, it was Sean [Jr’s] birthday, so we put music on, and other types of frequencies and sounds, and we’re not allowed to talk, we just follow the colours.
I always teach Sean, the way I describe it is, you know when you’re putting your hand in a lucky dip, and your hand’s like a magnet, you just grab the one that feels right. It’s like that–just relax, and that’s how you use your paintbrush and the paint.
Don’t think too much, just do. Follow that feeling.
We think of it like our family art therapy. And it’s just neat, the stuff he comes out with. He can just see stuff and draw it. No prompting or anything.
And so are you musicians as well? I see there’s a funky looking organ in the hallway.
So, that’s Leo. Neither of us played before we had kids. Leo just has this thing with music.
He just picks music up. We’ve tried lessons with him and then he shuts down, but he just loves music. When we used to have a piano in here, he’d have this tune that he’d make up, and then he’d hear something else and go over and add something into his tune that he’d heard.
He’s gone through Billy Joel, Elton John, and Frank Sinatra. And then he’ll randomly like a song and we’ll think, this is strange, he wouldn’t usually like this. And we realised underneath the singing you can hear piano.
We never showed him any of this music. He just finds it on YouTube.
Any other plans for the house?
Yeah, we want to expand. We actually had plans until Sean got injured, so they’ve just been delayed. But we have an extension plan. The garden used to be our pride and joy, so that has taken a back step the last couple of years which is a shame. So we’d love to get back into that, because it used to be so beautiful out there.
We’d like to work more on the fruit orchard out the back too. We’ve actually got a quarter of an acre. Our idea is that when the boys get to a certain age, all the trees will be big, you know. So that out the back will be like a forest.
by Sarah Morcom
